New World Order or Old World Order?

 

Just when you thought the New World Order was inevitable, and it was the end of life in America as we know it, along comes Daniel Greenfield at FrontPageMag with some skeptical words of reassurance:

. . . The new world we live in now is one where Russia is trying to rebuild a Czarist empire, and China, Iran, and every other power or power that was, is fighting to recreate its glory days.

The patchwork international order had been a product of the Cold War that Bush and Gorbachev were eagerly bidding farewell to. Globalism, or the post-Cold War international order based on trade, human rights and conferences proved to be as much of a joke as the UN, the WTO, the NGOs and the multilateral organizations that served as its shaky infrastructure.

Bush envisioned "a world where the rule of law supplants the rule of the jungle" and "nations recognize the shared responsibility for freedom and justice" on the brink of the original Gulf War.

But the only law that ever existed was the law of force enforced by self-interest or idealism.

. . .

The old world order is the reality that once the meetings are done and the conferences are over, every country is all alone. Virtue signaling globalism means that everyone will fly Ukrainian flags, just as they expressed solidarity with Hong Kong and will hashtag Taiwan at need.

And then they’ll move on to the next political outrage, celebrity gossip or trending news.

. . .

A century of tired arguments have reduced us to the false choice between isolationism and internationalism. But at the height of our rising power in the 19th century, the United States was neither. It was not afraid of asserting its ideals, but neither was it foolish enough to believe that the rest of the world would go along or that we were obligated to make them all behave. We primarily pursued our own interests and we were not afraid of a little expansionism either. 

Most importantly, we did not see our place in the world as bound by the rest of the world.

 . . .

The American Revolution and the Constitution ushered in the true new world order not by seeking to control the world, but by showing the human race what was possible. Every effort to outdo that order with a new world order has failed.  . . .

Mr. Greenfield’s full article is here.  I would like to think he’s right.  

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